But it is really about the romantic reverie shared by Zannis and his creator, basking in both the desire to do the brave and right thing, and in the somewhat solitary aura that involves. The novel is the closest Furst has ever come to sentimentality. He has an absolute aversion to bad things befalling his characters, something of a miracle in the context of WWII. The novel ends with a bit of good news so shameless it makes you smile in complete satisfaction. Spies of the Balkans suggests a word we don't associate with spy novels: lovely.

Nothing that is made up in Furst's novel is as unbelievable as the truth in Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat. This account of the Allied scheme of deception designed to mislead the Axis into thinking the Allies intended to attack Greece in 1943 rather than Sicily has already been chronicled in Ewan Montagu's 1953 The Man Who Never Was. But Montagu, the intelligence officer involved in the operation, could not reveal many details and so Macintyre, with access to Montagu's files, has stepped in.

It's an amicable amble through the planning that went into the scheme and the characters involved — among them, Ian Fleming. But it's more like a tour of British eccentricity. Macintyre loves the oddballs he found involved in this plan, but the cross-cutting style, while it makes for thumbnail portraits, doesn't build narrative momentum.

Yet Macintyre (who has written on WWII espionage before; his previous book was Agent Zigzag), like Furst, by focusing on WWII, is still refuting the very notion of an end to history. They're telling us that the stories of that period aren't close to exhausted, that there's still so much to know about a subject we like to fool ourselves into thinking we know cold.

There aren't any moral dilemmas or historical conundrums to be explored in Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. But they aren't dum-dum action outings, either. The books represent a welcome new strain: progressive vigilantism.

If vigilante fantasies are grounded in right-wing thinking, then the automatic liberal aversion to vigilante fantasies are grounded in another kind of fantasy: the notion that Rousseauist reason can always carry the day. Child used to work in advertising, and it would be hard to imagine he ever devised anything as canny as Reacher. His background — ex–military investigator with brains that can deduce any mystery and brawn that can reduce any opponent — has its he-man appeal. Reacher's style — a drifter who has no interest in possessions or in settling down, whose opponents have, over the course of 14 books, been the rich, powerful, and corrupt, or those who do their bidding — is nonconformism with, in its choice of enemy, a decided lefty bent.

In 61 Hours — the title referring to the hackneyed, but no less effective, ticking-clock scenario Child employs — Reacher is stranded in a South Dakota town during a blizzard, where meth dealers are coming for an elderly witness to their crimes whose testimony can sink them. The rapport between Reacher and this elderly woman, particularly Child's willingness to let her call him on some of his tough-guy bull, suggests a hero who his creator is not willing to allow to remain static. There are the usual elements, too — Reacher must deal with local badasses and government bureaucracy for Reacher to deal with. But there is also a sense of constriction here, a tightening of options and time and, in the ambiguous finale, physical space that makes the pages turn fast enough to risk paper cuts.

Strange trips If you want this summer’s eerie subject matter to hit a bit closer to home, or a bit closer to reality, check out Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State , by Michelle Souliere (The History Press; $17.99).

Review: The Road John Hillcoat doesn't stray from Cormac McCarthy's Road For those who found the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men too lighthearted, John Hillcoat's relentlessly faithful version of the author's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer-winning novel might hit the spot.

Pleasure principles Willard Spiegelman seems like a nice guy. He has had the good luck to live a happy life without major disaster or suffering. But as a long-time professor of English at Southern Methodist University and editor of the Southwest Review , he has ended up living his life among just those people — writers and academics.

Tired sleuth Has Walter Mosley gone off crime fiction? With the creation of Easy Rawlins in 1990, Mosley perfected the African-American side of the genre — along with a poetic and insightful take on post-war LA up through the 1960s — in 11 consistently solid books, the most recent coming out in 2007.

Viral bloodsuckers for the summer It might require you to buy a bigger beach tote, but there's no doubt that summer's must-read is Justin Cronin's The Passage , a hulking 766-page epic that traces the genesis and fallout of apocalyptic viral vampirism.

Summer treats From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.

Art in the air conditioning From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.

The Big Hurt: This week in brand synergy Uh oh, it appears I don't have anything important to make fun of — I was really counting on a member of Aerosmith's dying right before my deadline or something, but no such luck. Let's mine the press-release pile for some fresh squareness.

Review: Per Petterson plumbs The River of Time Why would Per Petterson — the bestselling Scandinavian writer whose books don't feature an invincible crimefighting heroine — curse the river of time when he is so adept at navigating it?

KATE BEYOND TIME: THE KATE MOSS BOOK | January 08, 2013 Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.

INTERVIEW: NINA HOSS ON BARBARA | December 18, 2012 Quietly over the last 11 years, one of the strongest collaborations in contemporary cinema has been developing between the German director Christian Petzold and the actress he often chooses to star in his films, Nina Hoss. Petzold and Hoss's latest collaboration, Barbara , is their richest and finest film.

SLIDESHOW: THE CHEAP NEAR-THRILLS OF SEXYTIME | December 14, 2012 With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.

BUNNY YEAGER’S NAKED AMBITION | October 05, 2012 Pin-up photography has served so many purposes — outlet for male desire; outlet for feminist ire; retro kitsch emblem — that it has barely been talked about as photography.